Fate And Destiny Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Fate And Destiny. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...
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John Lennon
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Captain?" "Yeah?" "Do you think it was destiny that brought us together?" He squinted and, after a thoughtful moment, shook his head. "No. I'm pretty sure it was Cinder.
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Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
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No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
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Gautama Buddha (Sayings of Buddha)
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You don't find love, it finds you. It's got a little bit to do with destiny, fate, and what's written in the stars.
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AnaΓ―s Nin
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I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
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Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
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Thomas Merton (Love and Living)
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I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you
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Kiersten White (The Chaos of Stars)
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Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
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SeΓ‘n O'Casey
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Do you ever wonder why things have to turn out the way they do?
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Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember)
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Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.
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Henry Miller
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Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman β€” a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
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I want to be the best version of myself for anyone who is going to someday walk into my life and need someone to love them beyond reason.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.
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Goldie Hawn
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You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
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Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1))
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We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.
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Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1))
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We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.
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Douglas Coupland
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Whatever is going to happen will happen, whether we worry or not.
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Ana Monnar
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Coincidences mean you're on the right path.
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Simon Van Booy (Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories (P.S.))
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There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.
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Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)
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...remember one thing only: that it's you-nobody else-who determines your destiny and decides your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else.
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E.E. Cummings
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I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.
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Jennifer Elisabeth
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Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.
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Elizabeth Gilbert
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My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you...
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Alexander Pushkin (Eugene Onegin)
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Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.
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Victor Hugo (Les Miserables)
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I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
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W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
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Frank heard a laugh behind him. He glanced back and couldn't believe what he saw. Nico di Angelo was actually smiling. "That's more like it," Nico said. "Let's turn this tide!
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Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4))
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I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.
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Jeanette Winterson (Lighthousekeeping)
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...some things are better left in the past. And true things are destined to repeat themselves.
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Suzanne Young (The Program (The Program, #1))
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She had to go on this quest. The fate of the world might depend on it. But part of him wanted to say: Forget the world. He didn’t want to be without her.
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Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
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Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.
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Mario Puzo (The Godfather (The Godfather, #1))
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Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass)
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A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
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When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him.
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Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Heart Crush)
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Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach. Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?
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Alan Moore (Watchmen)
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There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent, or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
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Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Hindi ako naniniwala sa fate, destiny at soul mates. Ang mundo ay binubuo ng mga pangyayaring random na kaganapan. Bahala ka sa buhay mo.
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Ramon Bautista (Bakit Hindi Ka Crush ng Crush Mo?)
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Fate is just another word for people's choices coming to a head. Destiny, coincidence, whatever you name it. It inevitably lies in our hands.
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Tiffanie DeBartolo (How to Kill a Rock Star)
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Character is destiny
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Heraclitus (Fragments)
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Maybe love at first sight isn’t what we think it is. Maybe it’s recognising a soul we loved in a past life and falling in love with them again.
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Kamand Kojouri
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Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices.
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Taylor Jenkins Reid (Maybe in Another Life)
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Love is for children, said the girl. Death is for fools, said the shadow. Darkness is my destiny, said the boy. Allegiance is my undoing, said the eagle. Suffering is our fate, said the beauty. And they were all horribly wrong.
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Hafsah Faizal (We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya, #1))
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There isn't any questioning the fact that some people enter your life, at the exact point of need, want or desire - it's sometimes a coincendence and most times fate, but whatever it is, I am certain it came to make me smile.
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Nikki Rowe
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For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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Destiny is a worrying concept. I don't want to be fated, I want to choose.
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Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)
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I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE AND THE CAPTAIN OF MY DESTINY.
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Nelson Mandela
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the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.
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Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)
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I shall seize fate by the throat.
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Ludwig van Beethoven
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Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is what makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.
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Mike Norton
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Was it fate? Was it destiny?" "I think it was Alan Blunt.
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Anthony Horowitz (Ark Angel (Alex Rider, #6))
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I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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The thing about fate, Magnus: even if we can't change the big picture, our choices can alter the details.That's how we rebel against destiny, how we make our mark. What will you choose to do?
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Rick Riordan (The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #1))
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I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself β€” my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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If ever I was running, it was towards you.
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Jennifer Elisabeth
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Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.
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Kevin Brockmeier (The View from the Seventh Layer)
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When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
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Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.
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Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
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I couldn’t have dreamed you into existence because I didn’t even know I needed you. You must have been sent to me.
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Kamand Kojouri
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I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl β€” this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you.
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.
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Jennifer Elisabeth
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As it occurs in nature, without medical treatment: Rh- (blood type) girls, can only make the baby with Rh- boys. How they gravitate towards each other out of the crowd proves higher order (destiny, fate, superintelligent design).
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Matthew Edward Hall (San Mateo: Proof of The Divine)
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In our struggle between liberty and destiny, we must never stop challenging the masterminds of fate that tries to deconstruct the stepping stones of our freedom. ("Wrong time. Wrong place")
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Erik Pevernagie
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I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel...
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Ernesto Che Guevara (The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey)
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Never surrender your hopes and dreams to the fateful limitations others have placed on their own lives. The vision of your true destiny does not reside within the blinkered outlook of the naysayers and the doom prophets. Judge not by their words, but accept advice based on the evidence of actual results. Do not be surprised should you find a complete absence of anything mystical or miraculous in the manifested reality of those who are so eager to advise you. Friends and family who suffer the lack of abundance, joy, love, fulfillment and prosperity in their own lives really have no business imposing their self-limiting beliefs on your reality experience.
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Anthon St. Maarten
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I’m not sure if fate or destiny is real. But I can tell you that sometimes the very thing you’ve been hoping for will walk through the door, determined to fend you off. And still, somehow, you will find that you are enough.
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Kiera Cass (The Heir (The Selection, #4))
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I don’t believe in destiny or fateβ€”I believe in choice. Love wasn’t just a choiceβ€”it was dozens, hundreds, thousands of choices. Every day was a choice.
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Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3))
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The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.
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Theodore Roethke (The Collected Poems)
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I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault.
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Jennifer Elisabeth
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A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.
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George S. Patton Jr.
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Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers!
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Douglas Coupland (Girlfriend in a Coma)
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A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.
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Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
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It doesn't matter if we don't mean to do the things we do. It doesn't mean if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn't even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.
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Taylor Jenkins Reid (Maybe in Another Life)
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Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?
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Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
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Remember how far you’ve come, and you won’t have to rely on a destiny for your future. It will come on your own.
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Shannon A. Thompson (Seconds Before Sunrise (Timely Death, #2))
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Learning to β€˜beβ€˜ ( -not the β€˜fake being’- ) and learning to β€˜be with others’ ( -the heartfelt being -), allows us to β€˜be in the world’ and to approach fate with determination, and bend destiny with confidence. ("With confidence Β»)
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Erik Pevernagie
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I believe in signs....what we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect & attention to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take. When we are on the right path, we follow the signs, and if we occasionally stumble, the Divine comes to our aid, preventing us from making mistakes.
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Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)
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Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.
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Kazuo Ishiguro (When We Were Orphans)
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The boy is destined for greatness, but with you, he is in danger. You are linked, the two of you. You must leave him. This is what I have seen.” I grew frustrated. β€œIs he in danger because of me?” β€œHe will die before his time with you by his side, unless you let him go. Fate or chance? Coincidence or destiny? I cannot say.” Her voice had turned soft. Soft and sad. A fist closed around my heart. I tried to let him go once before. It didn’t work. β€œI can’t,” was all I said to her, and quietly. β€œThen you will love him to ruins,” she said, and let my hands go.
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Michelle Hodkin (The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #2))
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You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew... God doesn't make the world this way. We do.
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Alan Moore (Watchmen)
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We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind?....... We make our own destiny.
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Swami Vivekananda
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The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.
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Clarice Lispector (The Passion According to G.H.)
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Fate doesn’t guarantee us a happy ending. We’re not promised to be together no matter what. But in dimension after dimension, world after world, fate gives us a chance. Our destiny isn’t some kind of mystical prophecy. Our destiny is what we do with that chance.
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Claudia Gray (A Million Worlds with You (Firebird, #3))
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Occurrences can be unpredictable. If we have to endure a cascade of rumpling coincidences, it’s fate that dictates our lives, taking over the common procedure of β€˜timing,’ and, thus, sealing the bondage of our free choice. Once our choice is kidnapped and strangled to the core, fate checkmates our destiny. (β€œWrong time. Wrong place”)
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Erik Pevernagie
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Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.
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Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
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If you lack the iron and the fuzz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked. The dull and prosaic will be granted adventures that will dice their central nervous systems like an onion, romantic dreamers will end up in the rope yard. You may protest that it is too much to ask of an uneducated fifteen-year-old girl that she defy her family, her society, her weighty cultural and religious heritage in order to pursue a dream that she doesn't really understand. Of course it is asking too much. The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.
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Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
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Can human nature be so entirely transformed inside and out? Can man, created by God, be made wicked by man? Can a soul be so completely changed by its destiny, and turn evil when its fate is evil? Can the heart become distorted, contract incurable deformities and incurable infirmities, under the pressure of disproportionate grief, like the spinal column under a low ceiling? Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.
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Victor Hugo (Les MisΓ©rables)
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It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.
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Stephen King (Cujo)
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I want to tell you something today, something that I have known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know about you and me and our fate. You, Harry, have been an artist and a thinker, a man full of joy and faith, always on the track of what is great and eternal, never content with the trivial and petty. But the more life has awakened you and brought you back to yourself, the greater has you need been and the deeper the sufferings and dread and despair that have overtaken you, till you were up to your neck in them. And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny, has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces. Your faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death. Is that true, Harry? Is that your fate?
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Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)
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A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.
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Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
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The course of history is determined not by battles, by sieges, or usurpation, but by the individuals. The strongest army is, at its most basic level, a collection of individuals. Their decisions, their passions, their foolishness, and their dreams shape the years to come. If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it is that all too often the fate of armies, of cities, of entire realms rests upon the actions of one person's decision, good or bad, right or wrong, big or small, can unwittingly change the world. But history can be quite the slattern. One never knows who that person is, where he might be, or what decision he might male. It is almost enough to make me believe in destiny.
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Jim Butcher (Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera, #1))
β€œ
If only you would realize some day, how much have you hurt me, If only your heart ever, craves for me or my presence… If only you feel that love again someday for me, If only you are affected someday by my absence… Only you can end all my suffering and this unbearable pain, If only you would know what you could never procure… If only you go through the memories of past once again, Since the day you left my heart has bled, no one has its cure… If only you would bring that love, those showers and that rain… If only you would come back and see what damage you create, I’ve been waiting for your return since forever more… If only you would see the woman that you have made, You said we cannot sail through, how were you so sure? If only you can feel the old things that can never fade, You may have moved on, but a piece of my heart is still with you… I know how I’ve come so far alone; I know how I’m able to wade, People say that I’m insane and you won’t ever come back again… Maybe you would have never made your separate way, Maybe you would have stayed with me and proved everyone wrong… If only you would know the pain of dying every day, If only you would feel the burden of smiling and being strong…
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Mehek Bassi (Chained: Can you escape fate?)
β€œ
And your will shall decide your destiny," he said: "I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions." You play a farce, which I merely laugh at." I ask you to pass through life at my side--to be my second self, and best earthly companion." For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by it." Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still too." A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away--away--to an indefinite distance--it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said - Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another." I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return." But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry." I was silent: I thought he mocked me. Come, Jane--come hither." Your bride stands between us." He rose, and with a stride reached me. My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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– But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth? – Man governs it himself, – Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question. – Pardon me, – the stranger responded gently, – but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period, well, say, a thousand years , but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? And in fact, – here the stranger turned to Berlioz, – imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ...hem ... hem ... lung cancer ... – here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure β€” yes, cancer β€” narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word β€”and so your governing is over! You are no longer interested in anyone’s fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven. And sometimes it’s worse still: the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk – here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz – a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he was governed by someone else entirely?
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Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
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I looked about me. Luminous points glowed in the darkness. Cigarettes punctuated the humble meditations of worn old clerks. I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny. Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (Wind, Sand and Stars)
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Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself. ”I began in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and emotions and experiences. Even now I do not consider myself a writer, in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life, a process which appears more and more inexhaustible as I go on. Like the world-evolution, it is endless. It is a turning inside out, a voyaging through X dimensions, with the result that somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling itself. It is this quality about all art which gives it a metaphysical hue, which lifts it out of time and space and centers or integrates it to the whole cosmic process. It is this about art which is β€˜therapeutic’: significance, purposefulness, infinitude. ”From the very beginning almost I was deeply aware that there is no goal. I never hope to embrace the whole, but merely to give in each separate fragment, each work, the feeling of the whole as I go on, because I am digging deeper and deeper into life, digging deeper and deeper into past and future. With the endless burrowing a certitude develops which is greater than faith or belief. I become more and more indifferent to my fate, as writer, and more and more certain of my destiny as a man.
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Henry Miller (Henry Miller on Writing)
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Fate determines your caste. You must accept it and live according to the rules." You can't really believe that!" I do believe it. That man's misfortune is that he cannot accept his caste, his fate." I know that the Indians wear their caste as a mark upon their foreheads for all to see. I know that in England, we have our own unacknowledged caste system. A laborer will never hold a seat in Parliament. Neither will a woman. I don't think I've ever questioned such things until this moment. But what about will and desire? What if someone wants to change things." Kartik keeps his eyes on the room "You cannot change your caste. You cannot go against fate." That means there is no hope of a better life. It is a trap." That is how you see it," he says softly. What do you mean?" It can be a relief to follow the path that has been laid oud for you, to know your course and play your part in it." But how can you be sure that you are following the right course? What if there is no such thing as destiny, only choice?" Then I do not choose to live without destiny," he says with a slight smile.
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Libba Bray (Rebel Angels (Gemma Doyle, #2))
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Featherweight by Suzy Kassem One evening, I sat by the ocean and questioned the moon about my destiny. I revealed to it that I was beginning to feel smaller compared to others, Because the more secrets of the universe I would unlock, The smaller in size I became. I didn't understand why I wasn't feeling larger instead of smaller. I thought that seeking Truth was what was required of us all – To show us the way, not to make us feel lost, Up against the odds, In a devilish game partitioned by An invisible wall. Then the next morning, A bird appeared at my window, just as the sun began Spreading its yolk over the horizon. It remained perched for a long time, Gazing at me intently, to make sure I knew I wasn’t dreaming. Then its words gently echoed throughout my mind, Telling me: 'The world you are in – Is the true hell. The journey to Truth itself Is what quickens the heart to become lighter. The lighter the heart, the purer it is. The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes. And the heavier the heart, The more chained to this hell It will remain.' And just like that, it flew off towards the sun, Leaving behind a tiny feather. So I picked it up, And fastened it to a toothpick, To dip into ink And write my name.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
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What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life--daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. β€œLife” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simple to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.
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Viktor E. Frankl